The Snowshoe Trail Part 21

He turned to the girl, and his voice was almost steady when he spoke.

"You'd better go out, Virginia--into the light," he advised.

"Why? Is it--_danger?_"

"Not danger." His voice in the silence thrilled her and moved her.

"Only wickedness. But it isn't anything you'd like to see."

The single match-flare had revealed him the truth. For one little fraction of an instant he had thought that the white form, so grim and silent against the stone, revealed some forest tragedy of years ago,--a human prey dragged to a wild beast's lair. But the shape of the cavern, the character of its walls, and a thousand other clews told the story plainly. The thing he had seen was a naked skeleton, flesh and garments having dropped away in the years; and the grizzly had simply made his lair in the old shaft of his father's mine. Bill had found his father's sepulcher at last!

For a moment he stood dreaming in the gloom. He understood, now, why his previous search had never revealed the mine. He had supposed that his father had operated along some stream, was.h.i.+ng the gold from its gravel: it had never occurred to him that he had dug a shaft. In all probability, considering the richness of their content, they had burrowed into the hill and had found an old bed of the stream, had carried the gravel to the water's edge in buckets, and washed it out.

He had never looked for tunnels and shafts: if he had done so, it was doubtful if he could have found the hidden cavern. The snowslide of some years before had covered up all outward signs of their work, struck down the trees they had blazed, and covered the ashes of their own camp fires. The girl's voice in the darkness called him from his musings.

"I believe I understand," she said. "You've found your mine--and your father's body."

"Yes. Just a skeleton."

"I'm not afraid. Do you want me to stay?"

"I'd love to have you, if you will. Some way--it takes away a lot of my bitterness--to have you here."

It was true. It seemed wholly fitting that she should be with him as he explored the cavern. It was almost as if the tragedy of his father's death concerned her, too.

"I can hold matches," she told him. She came up close, and for a moment her hand, groping, closed on his,--a soft, dear pressure that spoke more than any words. When it was released he lighted another match.

They stood together, looking down at the skeleton. But she wasn't quite prepared for what she saw. A little cry of horror rang strangely in the dark shaft.

This had been no natural death. Undoubtedly the elder Bronson had been struck down from behind, as he worked, and he lay just as he fell.

There was one wound in the skull, round and ghastly, and in a moment they saw the weapon that made it. A rusted pick, such as miners use, lay beside the body.

"I won't try to do much to-day," the man told her, "except to see up one of my cornerposts and erect a claim notice. My father's notice has of course rotted away in the years and the monument that probably stood out there beyond the creek bed was covered in snowslide. You see, a claim is made by putting up four stone monuments--one at each corner of the area claimed. We'll be starting down in a day or two, and I'll register the claim. Then I'll come back--and give these poor bones decent burial."

From there he walked back to the end of the shaft, scratching another match. It was wholly evident that the mine was only scratched. He held the light close, studying the rear wall of the cave. It was simply a gravel bed, verifying his guess that here lay an old bed of the creek.

In the first handful of stone he sc.r.a.ped out he found a half-ounce nugget.

"It's rich?" she asked.

"Beyond what I ever dreamed. But there's nothing more we can do now.

I've made my find at least--but it doesn't seem to make me--as happy as it ought to. Of course that man--there against the wall--would naturally keep a man from being very happy. Of, if I could only find and kill the devil who did it!"

His voice in the gloom was charged with immeasurable feeling. She had never seen this side of him before. Here was primeval emotion, the desired for vengeance, filial obligation, hate that knew no mercy and could never be forgotten. She understood, now, the savage feuds that sometimes spring up among the mountain people, unable to forget a blow or an injury. She had the first inkling of how deeply his father's murder had influenced him.

But his face was calm when they emerged into the light. They walked over to the creek, and beneath its overhanging banks there were the snow had not swept, he found enough rocks for his monument. He gathered them, carried them in armfuls to a place fifty yards beyond the creek and down it, level with such a turn in the hillside above, beyond which the old creek bed obviously could not lie; then heaped them into a moment. Then he drew an old letter from his coat pocket, and searching farther, found a stub of a pencil. Virginia looked over his shoulders as he wrote.

One hundred yards up the stream Harold watched them, dumbfounded as to what they were doing. He saw Bill finish the writing, then place the larger on the monument, fastening it down with a large stone. Then he came mus.h.i.+ng toward them.

So intent were they upon their work that they didn't notice him until he was almost up to them. But both of them would have paused in wonder if they had observed the curious mixture of emotions upon his lips. His lips hung loose, his eyes protruded, and something that might have been greed, or might have been jealousy or some other unguessed emotion drew and harshened his features.

"You've found a mine?" he asked.

Virginia looked up, joyful at Bill's good fortune. "We've found his father's mine--the old shaft where the bear was been sleeping. But there's a dreadful side of it too."

"Show me where it is. I want to see it. Take me into it, Virginia--right away----"

Bill had a distinct sensation of revulsion at the thought of this man going into his father's sepulcher, and he didn't know why. It was an instinct too deeply buried for him to trace. But he tried to force it down. There was no reason why Virginia's fiance shouldn't view his mine.

Already, Virginia was pointing out the way.

"You can claim half to it," he was whispering into her ear. "You were the one with him when he found it."

"I can--but I won't," she replied coldly. "He asked me to go with him. The thought's unworthy of you, Harold."

But he was in no mood to be humbled by her disapproval. Curiously, he was intensely excited. He mushed away toward the cavern mouth.

Two minutes later he stood in the darkness of the funnel, fumbling for a match. "Gold, gold, gold," he whispered. "Heaps and heaps of it--what I've always hunted. And Bill had to find it. That devil had to walk right into it."

He was sickened by the thought that except for his own cowardice he would have accompanied them into the den. At least he should have done that much, he told himself, to atone for his conduct during the bear's charge. Then he would have been in a position to claim half the mine--and get it too. Dark thoughts, curiously engrossing and l.u.s.tful, thronged his mind.

He found a match at least and it flared in the darkness. And the white skeleton lay just at his feet.

He drew back, startled, but instantly recognized his poise. He knelt with unexplicable intentness. He too saw the ghastly wound and its grim connection with the rusted pick. And he bent, slowly, like a man who is trying to control an unwonted eagerness, lifted the pick in his arms.

His fingers seemed to curl around it, like those of a miser around his gold. Some way, his grasp seemed caressing. Oh, it was easy to handle and lift! How naturally it swung in his arms! What a deadly blow the cruel point could inflict! Just one little tap had been needed.

Bronson had rocked and fallen, no longer to hold his share in the mine's gold. If there were an enemy before him now, one tap, and one alone was all that would be needed.

He could picture the scene of some twenty years before; the flickering candles, the gray walls covered with dancing shadows, the yellow gold,--beautiful in the light. He could see Bronson working,--always the plodder, always the fool! Behind him Rutheford, his partner, the pick in his arms and his brave intent in his brain. Then one swift stroke----

Harold did not know that at the thought his muscles made involuntary response. He swung the pick down, imagining the blow, with a ferocity and viciousness that would have been terrible to see.

In the darkness his face was drawn and savage, and ugly fires glowed and smoldered and flamed in his eyes.

XX

Bill made plans for an early start to his Twenty-three Mile cabin. The hike would have been easy enough, considering the firm snow that covered the underbrush, but the hours of daylight were few and swift. And he had no desire to try to find his way in that trackless country in the darkness.

"I'll leave before dawn--as soon as it gets gray," he told Virginia as he bade her good night. "I'll come back the next day, with a backload of supplies. And with the little we have left, we will have enough to go on. We can start for Bradleyburg the day after that."

Virginia took no pleasure in bidding him good-by. She had already learned that this winter forest was a bleak and fearful place when her woodsman was away. Curiously, she could find little consolation in the thought that she and Harold could have a full day together, alone. And before the night was half over, it seemed to her, she heard his stealing feet on the cabin floor outside her curtain.

He seemed to be moving quietly, almost stealthily. She heard the stove door open, and the subdued crack of a match scratched gently. A warm glow flooded her being when she understood.

For all the arduous day's toil that waited him, Bill hadn't forgotten to build her fire. The cabin would still be warm for her to dress. She didn't know that her eyes were s.h.i.+ning in the gloom. She drew aside the curtain.

"I'm awake, Bill. I want to tell you good-by again," she said.

"I don't see what makes me so clumsy," Bill returned impatiently. "I thought I could get this fire going without waking you up. But I'm glad enough to have another good-by."